Not In The Game Plan
by SassyJ
Summary: AU. Set after Game Plan. Anthony Monks returns to Sun Hill.
1. New Beginnings

I suppose I'm writing this down because anyone on the outside of this thing is going to think that I am either drunk, drugged, or hallucinating. The truth is, well, awkward to say the least. Improbable at best. People would say it was impossible. And, if you look at it on cold crisp paper, it is.

Much, much later, when the furore died down. And the generally accepted version of what happened came to be reported, we talked it over. My lover and I. Though even the fact that we had become lovers was at best, improbable.

I should start at the very beginning. As the song goes. It's a very good place to start. At the beginning, I was standing in a dock, in a court room. Hearing some pretty unpleasant things about myself. That these things were mostly true was absolutely no comfort. As with everything in court rooms, there's a balancing act. So they weighed my misdeeds, which were heavy, I admit. But up against that they stacked the fact that I had walked away. I had been so incensed and distraught at the beating my then lover had taken that I had willingly given up one of the men who had done it on the orders of my father, to the police. Well specifically one policeman. A copper.

I had betrayed my old man. Supposedly the father that loved me. Anyway, I betrayed him, to the cops. To one copper in particular. The copper had arrested me. He'd stood up in my personal space and told me to let him do his job. To give up the second man. The man who had beaten the man I loved at that time to a pulp. So I did. Because that's what Tom would have wanted.

Except. If I'm being honest with myself, it was more about what DS Stuart Turner wanted than what Tom wanted. I knew, as I stood outside that hospital room that Tom would never let me back into his life again anyway. That he would run as far and as fast as he could as soon as he was able. And I was right. He did.

Detective Sergeant Stuart Turner. There lay the real problem. My problem. After Tom had gone, I had a lot of time, time to do nothing but think. To sit and recall a fleeting moment in time, outside a hospital room, I was moody, being arrested has that kind of effect on me. So I was surly, and then he handed me his card and let me go. I went. I made him no promises. I just walked away. But I knew, deep down inside, that I was going to do what he wanted. So I did.

They arrested me again. I went down on remand. Then court. I had three whole days to look at him. He must have felt my eyes on him, noting every little detail, those dark gypsy good looks, his clothes, the sound of his voice, every time he looked at me, every time I didn't respond. Every time I stared at him as though committing him to memory.

I kept the card. And the day I was standing outside the prison waiting for a bus back to the crummy flat that had been arranged for me, I took it out of my wallet. Turned it over in my hands. It had been nearly a year, he would have forgotten me. In my head, there was this half formed plan to run into him. Accidently of course. So at some point in the preceding nine months, I had decided that if I wanted to get to know him, I had to work my way into his world from the same side of the law. So I had a job to go to when I left prison.

"You're going to do what?" My parole officer's disbelief was understandable.

"I am going to work as a trainee private investigator." I showed him the letter employing me in the capacity of trainee. "It's all perfectly legitimate."

He took the letter as though it might bite him. Read it through at least three times. And then he sighed. He went through the tedious process of explaining the parole system to me. As though it hadn't already been explained in prison at least a thousand times already. I picked up everything I needed and walked out the door, ready to begin my new and legitimate life.

All of which, leads neatly to that moment. Zero hour. The moment I had been subconsiously preparing for ever since the last day in court. The day our paths were bound to cross again.

I was sitting in a car. The sort of car which was a major climb down in the status ranks for me. Ten years old, dark, nondescript, a bit tired looking, baby seat in the back. As if that was likely to happen, though I did appreciate the irony, when I had time to think about it. I had been there four days already. Hiding behind newspapers waiting for my boss's target to do something the man claimed he was incapable of doing. My boss's clients were mainly insurance companies. Insurance companies don't like paying out money. And where possible, they like to claw it back if it could be proved that they had been taken for a ride.

Mr Ian Sherring was definitely taking his insurance company for a ride. I'm an ex con, so I can spot a fellow crook. The difference was, that I had seen the light... okay, may be I hadn't as such, but this was definitely penny ante stuff. Mr Sherring was supposedly incapable of doing any work. The insurance company had duly paid out his insurance claim, but they were edgy about it.

So I was sitting outside his place hiding behind several days' worth of copies of The Times. I was tired, I had several reels of film, nothing that was yet good enough to call it a day. My back, hips and knees ached, I was dying for a slash, and I knew I looked rough. A shadow blocked the light from behind me. Something knocked on the roof of the car. I looked in the wing mirror. Saw a piece of white shirt, a black leather belt, and indigo jeans. It was him. Just my luck. I was a mess. I was unprepared. Of all the crappy jobs, in all the world, or in this case, in London, he had to walk into mine.

I wound down the window.

"Would you mind getting out of the car, Sir."

So I slid out, straightened up, every bone in my body from waist to knees complained about that one. And turned to face him. Damn. He looked even better than I remembered, that half smile on his face that said he'd struck gold when I turned up in his jurisdiction.

"Anthony Monks." I could even forgive the triumphant note in his voice.

"DS Turner. Or have you gone up in the world?" Wouldn't do to let him think I'd missed him or anything like that.

"No, it's still DS Turner." he grinned, that pirate smile did some very peculiar things to my nerve endings. "Do you mind telling me what you're doing here?"

"Not at all." I turned to reach into the glove box, "if you don't mind?" He nodded. I could sense his barely contained excitement, my Stuart liked results. I knew that much about him. Though at what point I had started thinking of him as my Stuart, I am not prepared to admit.

I rooted around in the glovebox and pulled out the paperwork I had been given, in preparation for just such an occurrance. I handed it over. He looked almost disappointed. I had a perfectly legitimate reason for being there. He looked over it all, examining it for bugs, but there were none. He handed it back to me. Our fingers brushed, I looked up, and caught a fleeting glimpse of something in his eyes and expression that caused a considerable stirring in my loins. I was grateful to be holding onto the papers, to at least cover my confusion a little. Those dark gypsy eyes were still staring at me, full of Eastern promise, as the telly advert went.

"Sarge?" Female voice, mildly amused, Stuart flushed a little and turned round to face the speaker.

"Jo."

"Well, aren't you going to introduce us?" he looked even more confused than he had when our fingers had brushed.

"Er."

"I'm DC Jo Masters, Sun Hill." she was older than him, assured, confident, the kind of woman it would be nigh on impossible to deceive, and she clearly had Stu's number. And he was very aware of it.

"Anthony Monks, I'm a private investigator." I held out my hand. She took it. Looked me up and down, I sensed that she knew what colour my underwear was, and what size shoe I took before we let go. And she knew, from the moment that she touched my hand that I was interested in Stuart. And I sensed that I had found an ally of sorts.

She smiled. I smiled. Stu looked glum, he sensed that he was going to lose this one. And my Stuart didn't like to lose. He also wasn't too keen when Jo took his elbow, winked at me and steered him firmly back to their car. It was clear that they were lurking about too. And had spotted me.

As I got back in the car, I had time to wonder why they were there, and whether or not there was going to be more to this than met the eye. And, most significantly, if they had spotted me, had the target spotted me as well. I looked at my watch, it was knocking off time. Mr Sherring was clearly not going to commit any kind of mistake while I was sitting there. Time for plan B.

I looked in my rearview mirror. They were still there, five cars back on the other side of the road. I could feel Stuart's eyes boring into the back of my neck. The ache in my loins grew worse. I turned the key and pulled away, tomorrow was going to be interesting.


	2. Up Close and Very Personal

I was right. As I knew that I would be; the next day was interesting. And the day after that. We lurked. Me watching Sherring and keeping an eye out for Stuart as well. Him watching whoever they were supposed to be watching, and watching me too.

You're probably wondering how I knew he was watching me. Well I could say that it was by the pricking of the hairs on the back of my neck, but the truth is much simpler than that. I simply caught him at it.

After two days, the coppers had graduated from the car to a more comfortable venue almost exactly opposite my target. I had taken to moving my car around, and actually changing it occasionally so he didn't get too suspicious. One of my first shopping trips after getting my first salary into my bank account was to go out and buy a good pair of fairly tough binoculars. So, on the third day, almost delirious with boredom I took a look around. A first floor window caught my attention. I focused in on it, and saw movement. A pair of binoculars were focused on me. I refocused, I could see a tanned hand, and black hair and knew it was him. Watching me.

Well this state of affairs went on for a couple more days, then one evening I happened to look up as I was closing my front door. Five or six parking spaces back along the road, I spotted a dark blue Vectra. I didn't need to see the driver. I knew.

It was a pig of a night. The rain was belting down. I moved into my sitting room, and picked up my binoculars. I could just about make him out through all the rain. His expression was angry, that was clear.

The next day we were back to staring at each other through binoculars. I was going to have to be careful, I was spending nearly as much time staring at Stuart as I was at my target. Mr Sherring was proving to be a tougher nut to crack than I had imagined. Something about his behaviour said that he'd done this before. Perhaps several times. I had a sidekick in this enterprise, another trainee like me, Jeff wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, but if you wound him up and pointed him in the right direction he was quite effective. So I had Jeff trawling through all the back copies of the paperwork we got from the insurers to see if there were any hints.

I took a break. There was a convenient cafe around the corner. I was just buying myself a coffee and a couple of sandwiches when a voice called my name. I turned round. It was Stuart's partner from the first day.

"Jo, isn't it?" I stuck my hand out again. She shook it. And I knew that this wasn't a chance encounter. She had been watching me and waiting for an opportunity.

"Yes, it is." She smiled. That smile. I found myself warming to her even more than I had that first day. That had mostly been admiration and a bit of envy that she had my Stu's number, now I was starting to like her for herself. We chatted about next to nothing for almost ten minutes. And after she was gone, I realised I had been very subtly interviewed, and that she knew that whatever else was going on, my intentions towards her partner were pretty dishonourable. Some how, I had the feeling she was okay with that.

Finally. Mr Sherring put his head up above the parapet. I snapped away. A sinking feeling in my heart. That my brief moment in time in Stu's general orbit was coming to an end.

I needn't have worried. I filed my paperwork, printed off pages and pages of photographs proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mr Sherring was swinging the lead, and ripping off the insurance company at the same time. I picked up the next file and looked inside, another dodger, who had filed another compensation claim for yet another work threatening "injury". I was starting to feel slightly irritated. I mean. I wasn't exactly a criminal mastermind by comparison. But were we, the criminal class, really this predictable. No wonder there was a certain inevitability to going to jail. And the most likely moment for that to happen, particularly in my father's case, was when we started believing in our own invincibility. The police were better informed, better educated and generally smarter than we tended to give them credit for. The criminal classes were definitely on the losing side. So I crossed the great divide. For the maybe chance of getting to know someone I wanted to love.

I pushed all my paperwork into the rucksack I carried about with me and headed home. It was another pig of a night. The rain was slashing down hard, and I fairly sprinted to the door, letting myself in in a hurry and banging the door to behind me.

I took off my wet clothes, dried myself off and changed into something comfortable. I had just made myself something to eat when the doorbell went. I went to open it.

He stood there. He was absolutely soaked, he must have been standing in the rain for at least ten minutes to get that soaked. His hair was plastered to his head, his eyes held a combination of anger, worry, curiosity and something else which he was trying to keep to himself, and failing miserably. Desire.

Wordlessly I stood aside, and, after a second's hesitation he stepped past me into the hall. I pushed the door shut and turned around. Something trite ran through my head, something about getting him out of those wet things. His jacket was sodden and dripping, his pale blue shirt was plastered to his body, his jeans and shoes were squelching. Water was positively running off him and he was making a sizeable puddle on the lino-covered floor.

We were no more than ten inches apart. He looked angry, confused, and desperate all at the same time. And I wanted him more than I could actually express.

Figuring it was as well to be shot for a sheep as a lamb, and wondering exactly how this was going to be described on the charge sheet, probably assault on a police officer, I stepped closer, and put my hand around his neck to pull him close. He moved towards me, his hands went round my waist. And our lips met.

Stuart Turner wanted me as badly as I wanted him. And he was angry and confused, and curious, and very elated about it. It was all there, in his kiss. As it usually is. The kiss is the dead giveaway. It tells you everything you need to know about your lover's feelings and the way this is going to be conducted.

He shrugged out of his soaked jacket, which hit the floor with a dull and very squelchy sounding thud, spraying yet more water around the hall. My hands had introduced themselves to his shirt buttons as we pressed closer to each other and continued to taste each other's passion. His shirt joined his jacket in the puddle on the floor. His fingers had worked out most of my buttons, but patience was clearly not one of his strong suits, because I heard the distinct ping of flying buttons as my shirt descended to join his.

I needed to get out of my jeans, and quickly. Gently I eased the zip down, while his fingers went for my belt and the button. He kicked off his shoes, and stripped his socks off too, our hands explored each other as we worked our way down the hall, shedding clothes and inhibitions along the way. At the bedroom door we paused, his skin was chilled, he was shivering with cold and desire, but there was a question in those dark gypsy eyes. I smiled, and drew him up against me, his arms curved around my waist as we kissed again, more slowly, and my lips made promises that I wasn't entirely sure my body was going to be able to keep.

He leaned into me. He might have been quite experienced in matters of the heart and the bedroom, but that wasn't the feeling I was getting. And he was a complete novice in the department of our kind of relationship, that was obvious, but he was getting into it.

I wasn't exactly experienced myself, I had had that one brief relationship with Tom, then jail, with my head so full of Stu that at times I quite literally couldn't think straight. But I knew more than he did, and I knew what we both wanted. I got us next to the bed and picked up the lubricant that I had bought, just in case, from the bedside door. As we continue to kiss and explore each other's bodies, I squeezed some into his arse crack, gently massaging his anus with my finger, slowly I moved round, his anal muscle yielded and very gently we came together. He pushed himself back against me and we made very slow, sweet love. When we parted, Stu eased his body over mine, and we did it again. I was in bed with the man of my dreams and we were making slow sweet hot love to each other, I had definitely died and gone to heaven.

When we were finally spent I rolled over to face him, uncertain what I would see there. His eyes were closed, he had the most beautiful long black lashes which I had never noticed before. There was something about the way his eyes were screwed closed that told me to move closer, I slid my arms around him and he burrowed against my shoulder, his arms wrapped fiercely tight around me. He rubbed his cheek against my shoulder and something hot and wet splashed down onto my skin. I tilted his chin up and his eyes opened, and he looked at me with his heart in his eyes. This wasn't just curiosity or a five minute wonder to him, I could see a wonder, a fear, a joy, and a desperate need in his eyes, which I had feared wouldn't be there. Because having tasted the sweetness of being with someone you love, you never want to let them go again. And that was the way I felt about Detective Sergeant Stuart Turner.

He pressed close against me, and his lips met mine, as we kissed I took stock of the new love of my life. He was broader, taller and heavier than Tom, but since he was a fit, and active, police officer in his mid thirties that was no surprise. He had broad shoulders, well developed bicep muscles, a broad chest, flat stomach and very powerful thighs, and I had explored every inch of his gorgeous body. He was returning the favour, and I gasped as he slid himself lower. He was doing things with his tongue which I was pretty sure were not taught at Hendon, and it was driving me wild. I abandoned rational thought and just gave myself up to my hot dark gypsy lover.


	3. Disgustingly Domestic

We lasted one week living in separate accommodation, before Stu was sitting in front of my parole officer and explaining that I was better off living with him. The expression on my parole officer's face was a picture that I was unlikely to let go of in a hurry. I felt that he really should get out more and lead a less sheltered life. It's perfectly normal for an ex felon to fall in love with the officer who arrested him, move in together and set up house.

Stu was his ruthless, charming, clever self. And if I hadn't already been in love with him, I would have fallen in a big way just for that interview alone. Watching him with my parole officer I had an opportunity to appreciate just how clever and how devious he truly was. And how single minded. If he wanted something, he was prepared to go to quite a length to get it. He was smart. Intuitive. He knew the right things to say, and the right buttons to push.

We hadn't been living together a week before I worked out that most of that was largely surface. A veneer. And a pretty thin one at that. Getting him to open up about his childhood was quite difficult, but he did eventually, and he had had it tough. Mother left when he was 13, father died slowly of cancer before his eighteenth birthday. He had been born in France, and there was, as I had begun to suspect, a fair amount of gypsy street urchin in his make up, but a combination of education and his father's wish to make him into an Englishman had suppressed most of it. He was highly intelligent and hugely competitive, and he loved to win. He particularly enjoyed, which came as no surprise, sparring with suspects and then pulling the rug out from under them.

But there was still something of the confused and slightly angry little urchin in him, he struggled with love, the people he had loved had been snatched away, or walked away, and that had left him vulnerable and determined to keep himself from further hurt. My own introduction to love had been somewhat skewed, but by comparison to Stu's, my path to happiness was a lot more straight forward, being the gay son of a gangster suddenly seemed a lot less stressful than having Stu's life.

I wanted to make up for all the times he had been hurt. We had fallen joyously into bed together, but there was more to it than that. I took every opportunity to show him that I loved him and that I wasn't going to run away. It took a while, but gradually he started to lose the suspiciousness that coloured quite a lot of what he did.

We were spontaneous, which led to a couple of extremely awkward moments. Like the day that Jo knocked at our front door, didn't get an answer, got a bit worried, let herself in with her key (Stu had given her a key long ago) and discovered us loving each other on the hall floor. It was, as she so delightfully phrased it, an information step too far. It also gave Jo, who scarcely needed any help in that department, further ammunition to tease Stu. Thereafter, every time she came to the front door and knocked, she would pry up the letter box flap and enquire whether we were decent.

To my certain knowledge Jo was the only one who knew about us. Stu was reticent to the point of total silence about his love life at work, which given his one disasterous affair with DI Samantha Nixon and its sad outcome, came as no real surprise. That he was now in a serious gay relationship with someone he had helped send to prison would have taken some explaining even for someone as clever and devious as Stu. Then one night, when the three of us were sat down with a companionable bottle of wine and some idle chat, we hatched a plan which was, frankly, mind blowing. Jo wanted a child. The only candidate for father that she could think of was Stu. Stu quite liked the idea of being a dad, I rather liked the idea of there being another little Stu in the world. So we drank a toast on it.

Jo got pregnant. There was a lot of rejoicing and a great deal of spontaneity after that announcement. She decided that we were both involved, so when it came time for the first scan we were both there to hold a hand each. The three of us gazed at the little grey shape in mutual admiration and considerable glee. Suddenly we had all gone from being three somewhat lonely people without a great deal of personal future to being a very odd family unit. Life was good.

But not without a few bumps along the road. I had slowly graduated from low grade con artists depriving insurance companies of their rightful pennies, to medium grade and much more devious criminals with larger hauls on their minds. Things got a bit riskier with the upgrade. I had to be more devious to get the evidence.

And the risks of Stu's chosen career were brought forcefully home one day when I got a call from Jo. Stu was at St Hugh's. He'd chased a suspect along some scaffolding, there had been a struggle and they had both fallen. Thankfully not far, but they had landed in a skip with Stu on the bottom and he'd done damage. Amongst all the bruises, he had a couple of cracked ribs and a badly dislocated left shoulder, and he was in a lot of pain. I took him home, helped him out of his clothes and saw for myself the extent of his injuries. The black and purple bruises standing out in stark contrast to the white bandages strapping his injured ribs and immobilising his left arm. And for the first time I truly realised just how precious our moments together really were. His job could get him killed.

It made me more determined to be worthy of him, and to love him with everything that I had. So we did. He was tough, fit and very athletic, so he healed quickly. Which was good. Injured ribs and shoulder slowed him up, and my Stu was not the most patient man on the planet. Particularly with illness or injury, his own. Even the flu didn't really slow him down, and it didn't prevent him from wanting to go into work to spread gloom and the scent of eucalyptus around the office. It was only when I pointed out that, like Typhoid Mary, he was doing his fellow officers, including the mother of his child, absolutely no favours by spreading his germs about, that he agreed to give in and stay home. So he just gave it to me instead.

I can honestly say that I have never felt worse in my life. My head felt like it was being squeezed in a vice, my sinuses had shrunken to the size of pinholes, my throat felt like it really had been gargled with razorblades, my chest was tight, every joint ached, and my stomach was rejecting food. I lay curled up on the sofa, under the duvet which Stu had carefully tucked round me, a lifetime's supply of tissues within easy reach, a bucket... just in case... two large jugs of water and a glass and an enormous pile of so-called cold remedies, all of which smelt vile and tasted worse, and pretended that I was perfectly fine, that Stu should just go to work and I would be perfectly fine (if you're sensing a little repetition in this sorry tale, you would be right) and that everything would be perfectly fine until my lover came home after work.

"I've got my mobile." I feebly waved it at him. It did nothing to ease the panic in his eyes, but he grudgingly agreed to go to work.

The first text arrived sometime after he must have arrived in the office. I replied. And they kept coming in a steady stream. At some point I drifted off to sleep. The next thing I was aware of was that someone was bent over me, a hand was gently stroking my hair. I opened my eyes slowly, feeling more than a little groggy. Stu's anxious brown eyes stared back at me, he was crouched down next to the sofa.

"How are you feeling?" he said. I could see the worry in his eyes, I tried to clear my throat which felt tight and sore.

"Death. Without so much as the cursory warm up. I suspect." I looked up, strangely relieved to find Jo standing there. She had, as usual, hit the nail on the head with pinpoint accuracy. And I had very good cause to thank Jo's rather ruthless efficiency. Though as usual, not really her rather unflattering way of putting it. She needed me back on my feet in double quick time, she said, before her partner drove her, and the rest of the relief, completely insane worrying himself into a nervous fit over my health. It wasn't good for the baby, she said. And it wasn't good for me or her to have to put up with him. This said with a sideways glare at Stu. Who looked suitably chastened. For all of about three seconds. Before he snapped back.

"Pardon me for feeling." he hunched a shoulder irritably.

I felt like crap. I was seriously not up for another one of their spats, particularly as Stu was certain to be on the losing end, which would make him grumpy for at least a couple of days. I groaned. Loudly. He swooped. Argument forgotten. Job done. I looked up at Jo. She grinned.

"A man after my own heart." she said cryptically. And set about sorting us out.


End file.
